Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.

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I offer a wide range of guided walks around the city and university. These can be a general introduction to the history and architecture or looking at specific themes and subjects.

I am a Catholic and a historian based in Oxford, where I am a member of Oriel College. My research, for a long delayed D.Phil., is a study of Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln in the second decade of the fifteenth century. I also work as a freelance tutor in History and as an independent tour guide.
I was received into the Church in 2005 and am a Brother of the External Oratory of St Philip Neri at the Oxford Oratory.

John Dillon followed up with a supplement to Gordon Plumb's offering of links to images of St. Barbara in glass, with some links to other period-pertinent images of her, which indicate her onetime popularity as an intercessor and patroness. I have reproduced some of them before in posts on this feast, but they are so splendid it seems a pity not to reproduce them again. I have added my own comments on [ ]:

c) Barbara as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the narthex of the church of the Theotokos in the monastery of Hosios Loukas (St. Luke of Stiria) near Distomo in Phokis:

j) Barbara (lower register) as depicted in an early fourteenth-century fresco (between 1307 and 1313) in the church of the Theotokos of Ljeviš in Prizren in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:

k) Barbara as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (between c. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:http://tinyurl.com/gvlf4dy
Detail view:

n) Barbara as depicted (at right; at left, St. Francis of Assisi) by Jaume Ferrer Bassa in a mid-fourteenth-century fresco (between 1343 and 1348) in the capella di Sant Miquel of the Reial Monestir de Pedralbes in Barcelona:

o) Barbara as portrayed in a relatively recently restored later fourteenth-century polychromed wooden statue (c. 1380) from the church of Corpus Christi in Svaty Tomáš (Český Krumlov dist.) in the Czech Republic, now in the Regionální muzeum, Český Krumlov:

x) Barbara as depicted (four scenes from her Passio) in seemingly fifteenth-century paintings (_aliter_, fourteenth-century; uncovered and restored, 1888-1893) in the apse of the église Notre-Dame at Savigny (Manche), once a dependency of the abbey of Sainte-Barbe-en-Auge:

bb) Barbara (flanked by Sts. Felix and Adauctus) as depicted by Wilhelm Kalteysen of Aachen in the central panel of his mid-fifteenth-century St. Barbara Altarpiece (1447) in the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw:

ee) Barbara (at left; at right, St. Catherine of Alexandria) as depicted in the lower panel of a wing of a later fifteenth-century altar (c. 1476-1490) in the bazilika sv. Jakuba in Levoča (Prešovský kraj) in Slovakia:

ff) Barbara (at right; at left, St. Catherine of Alexandria) flanking the BVM as depicted by Hans Memling in a late fifteenth-century panel painting (early 1480s) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

ll) Barbara (martyrdom and other scenes) as depicted by Jerg Ratgeb on the central panel of his early sixteenth-century Barbara Altar (1510) in the Stadtkirche of Schwaigern (Lkr. Heilbronn), Baden-Württemberg:

[ I am rather intrigued by the Noddy lookalike in the scenes in the background...]

mm) Barbara (at right; at left, St. Homobonus of Cremona) flanking the BVM and Christ Child on an early sixteenth-century relief (1511) for the former Ospedal dei Poveri Sartori at no. 4338 Fondamenta dei Sartori in Venice's _sestiere_ of Cannaregio:

oo) Barbara as portrayed, perhaps by the maître de Mailly, in an earlier sixteenth-century sandstone statue (c. 1525) in the église paroissiale de la Nativité et de l'Assomption de la Sainte-Vierge in Villeloup (Aube):